


A Roll in the Hay

by OutOfAutumn



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: M/M, Post-Kings Rising, literal sex in hay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-16
Updated: 2018-08-16
Packaged: 2019-06-28 07:56:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15703050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OutOfAutumn/pseuds/OutOfAutumn
Summary: A storm rages. Damen and Laurent show up on the doorstep of an old farmhouse, chained together at the wrist.The title should be taken literally.





	A Roll in the Hay

**Author's Note:**

> Ok, I’m not sure how to explain this. 
> 
> Basically I wanted to try writing smut, and it somehow turned into this. It was sort of - SORT OF - inspired by that badass scene in Once Upon A Time in Mexico where Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek escape from a building while chained together. 
> 
> Enjoy!

  
  
The knock that rattled Suzette’s door was calm, nearly inaudible.

It was an utter antithesis to the storm, which raged violently behind the two young men who stood dripping on her doorstep. One of the men was almost a head shorter than the other, with tousled blonde hair and blue eyes that gleamed through the patches of mud on his face. His white shirt was so drenched that it clung to his body, his nipples two sharp peaks on either side of his chest. 

The other man was a dark-complected Akielon, equally muddy, covered only by the ratty remains of what must once have been a chiton. Unlike his blonde companion, he showed no outward symptoms of the cold, probably insulated by the mounds of muscle that swelled over almost every facet of his body. 

Suzette’s stomach swooped. She was suddenly terribly aware of the threadbare old nightgown she was wearing, which did nothing to stop the bite of the whipping wind. 

“Good evening,” said the blonde man, dipping a quick nod. “We wonder if you might be willing to assist us.” After snatching a quick look over his shoulder, he extended a hand. The effort was encumbered by a thick gold cuff on his wrist, which was attached to a short chain, which was attached to an identical cuff on the taller man’s wrist.    


Suzette’s heart did a somersault. She stepped back. 

“My wagon got trapped in the mud a ways back,” the blonde continued. “We should be able to extricate it once it stops raining, but we-” 

Suzette couldn’t take her eyes off the chain. “You’re criminals,” she said, pressing a hand to her chest. 

“Correction:  _ He’s  _ a criminal.” The blonde pointed at the Akielon, who looked at him with wide eyes. “I am the man charged with bringing him to justice.” 

The Akielon - the tall, very  _ handsome  _ Akielon, Suzette internally added - looked away from the blonde, fixing his eyes on some point at the far side of Suzette’s porch. His mouth was compressed into a taut line. At first she thought he was in pain, until she noticed his shoulders were shaking and his stomach was clenching. He was struggling to hold back laughter. 

She could not blame him. The blonde was not frail by any stretch of the imagination, but the constable who had sent him after this mountain-of-a-man deserved to have his badge revoked. 

“If you are charged with bringing him to justice,” Suzette asked, “How is it you are chained together?” 

“It was the only way to be certain I would not lose him.” 

The Akielon sputtered, puffing out his cheeks. The blonde shot him a glare that put the bone-chilling winds to shame. 

As though to challenge this assertion, a blast of air cut in from the side, slapping the porch with a sheet of rain. Suzette felt the sting of the stray droplets and flinched back inside, reflexively pulling the door with her. It stopped a few inches short of closing. 

She looked down. There was a mud-caked boot wedged between the door and the frame. She followed it up a tightly-laced leg, to a drenched white shirt, to the face of the blonde man, whose icy gaze was now fixed solely on her. 

Her heart galloped. 

“Perhaps this will convince you,” the blonde said, through chattering teeth. He reached into his pocket, withdrew a velvet pouch, and held it out to her. “Would a criminal part with his change?”

She hesitated, letting the little bag dangle between them, swaying with the force of the wind. The bottom was bowed out, as though it contained a great weight. She took it. 

One look into the bag revealed that this was far more than mere change. There were at least fifty coins inside. A fleeting bolt of lightning illuminated the sky, revealing them to be gold, smooth and shiny, perhaps newly minted. 

It was more money than she’d ever seen in her life. 

She looked up, feeling the blood drain from her face. “This is a fortune.” 

She expected the blonde to snatch the bag back, because of course no mere mortal would willingly part with this much gold. He only stared at her, hugging himself as best as he could while chained to the other. 

She forced a dry swallow. “I cannot possibly accept this.”

The blonde and the Akielon exchanged a glance. The Akielon’s face changed the moment he looked at the blonde, who was shivering so badly that it seemed he might shake apart. The amusement left the Akielon’s eyes and was replaced by something else, something that Suzette thought could be pain, though it did not appear to be of a physical nature. 

“Then can you at least accept the gesture, and let us sit before your fire?” The Akielon asked, turning back to Suzette. “I swear we will not be any trouble.” He spread a palm across his chest, as if to say  _ cross my heart and hope to die.  _

_ No,  _ she wanted to say.  _ No,  _ because she lived alone, and it was dangerous to let two strange men inside her house. 

If it were only the blonde with the frightening eyes, it might have been easier to refuse. It would have been easier to grab her husband’s sword, shake the dust off of it, and order him to leave or die - though she was trembling so badly she doubted she could effectively wield it.         


But the look in the Akielon’s eyes said he would drop to his knees and start begging any second now. 

She felt her stomach grow heavy, as though something in her chest had dislodged and plunked into it. She couldn’t turn him away. 

Of course that face of his,  _ that body,  _ had nothing at all to do with it. 

“I suppose you can come inside,” Suzette said. She swallowed a lump and forced herself to step aside. 

The blonde blundered forward, dragging the Akielon with him. “Thank you,” he said, not quite managing to filter the desperation from his voice. As he hurried past Suzette, he patted his companion’s arm. 

“That’s a good criminal,” he said. 

 

******

 

Their first request was reasonable enough: a pail of hot water. 

She provided a bundle of old rags, which the Akielon thanked her for before promptly thrusting them all into the steaming pail. He wrung two of them out and placed them on the back of the blonde’s neck. The blonde thanked him, smiling feebly, and set about scrubbing his face. 

He did not look nearly as frightening with a clean face. Without the jarring contrast of black mud, his eyes were soft as a summer sky. He too was attractive, though more pretty than handsome, with impossibly long eyelashes and an exquisite bone structure. Looking at him gave Suzette a distinct sense of deja vu that she could not place. 

Once the task of washing was done, she invited the duo to sit at her table, which took up the majority of the space inside her cottage. 

“I'm sorry there isn't much room,” she said. “It’s only me who resides here.” The words came out before she could stop them, and she instantly bit the inside of her cheek to punish herself for it. The last thing she needed was for them to know she was alone and practically defenseless. 

“It’s no problem at all,” the Akielon said, looking comically large in one of her tiny wooden chairs. “It's quite homey.” 

“Yes,” the blonde agreed. “And on cold nights such as these, the size is a virtue. One need not sit in front of the fire to be warmed by it.” 

This was true. The hearth was to the left, where it took up most of the wall. The air was warm and perfumed by the robust aroma of wood smoke. Suzette could feel the fire’s heat even when she was lying in her bed, which was on a narrow loft up to the right.

Despite the warmth of the room, the rags remained on the blonde’s neck. The Akielon was looking at the blonde’s red nose and wind-chapped cheeks with something that resembled concern. Their chained wrists lay on the tabletop between them, their hands slightly overlapping.

Suzette’s eyes snagged on the sight. She'd never seen a prisoner so fond of his captor. The two of them looked like they’d been through a lot; maybe it had been enough to forge a camaraderie between them? 

Or maybe they were lying to her.

_ Relax,  _ she told herself, as her heart flip-flopped against her sternum.  _ It’s nothing.  _

She couldn’t quite keep the tremble from her voice as she asked, “Who are you?” 

“My name is Charls,” the blonde said.

Suzette licked her lips. “Charls, the famed cloth merchant?” That was surely a lie, for she'd had the honor of meeting Charls once, and he'd been portly and middle-aged: quite opposite this young man.

“No, a distant cousin,” Charls said, flapping a hand. He gestured to the brunette. “And this is Dament.”

A brief silence, filled only by a deep rumble in the Akielon’s throat, as though he were suppressing a cough. 

“That's an odd name,” Suzette said. 

Charls raised his eyebrows. “You mean to tell me that you have not heard of the ruffian I’ve made it my life’s work to capture? The fearsome Dament of Delpha?” 

“I am afraid not.” 

Dament looked down to inspect the tablecloth, still audibly attempting to control his cough. 

Charls leaned toward Suzette, eyes blazing. “You, a farmer, have not heard of the man who single-handedly rustled five hundred cows in one night? The man who set over a hundred barns aflame, all to capture the frightened horses as they fled?” 

The coughing got worse. Dament was still looking down at the table, so Suzette could not see his face, but she saw his throat pulsing and constricting. It seemed his neck might split with the force of it. 

In an ordinary circumstance, she would have asked if he was all right, perhaps offered him a glass of water. But Charls’s eyes were on her like anchors. It felt impossible to move. 

Suzette licked her upper lip. It was salty, flavored with new sweat.  “I am no farmer.” 

Charls looked around. “Interesting. Was that not a stable I saw alongside your dwelling? And a barn?” 

“Indeed it was, but both are mostly empty. My husband was the farmer. Not I.” 

“I see,” Charls said. He opened his mouth as though to say something else, then blinked, and shut it again. He leaned back in his chair. 

She could sense the question that neither of her guests wanted to ask. She knew it was foolish to continue, but an opportunity to talk about her husband was not easily ignored. The words gushed out of her. 

“He was a casualty at the Battle of Marlas,” she said. “I'm sure you must have been quite young when it happened, so perhaps you don't remember, but it was-"

“I remember,” Charls said abruptly. 

Suzette nodded. It was indeed hard to forget, surely even for someone who would have been a boy at the time. 

“My husband was a foot soldier,” she continued. “He'd always wanted to serve the Crown, but there were too many things to do around the farm. Then Queen Hennike died, Akielos raised arms, and the King needed men. My husband was proud to ride off.” 

She tried not to look at Dament as she spoke. Despite the gruesomeness of her husband’s death, shallow prejudices were pointless: young Dament, though Akielon, was not responsible for it. Yet she saw him look up at her from the corner of her eye, his large brown eyes downcast, owning the guilt. 

It moved something inside of her chest: something that had settled there when she'd noticed the chain.

She could have told them the end of the story, but they already knew how the story ended. She could see it on their faces. The duo had, perhaps subconsciously, moved closer together, so that now their shoulders were touching. Dament’s chained hand was subtly curled around Charls’s, threaded through the pale fingers. Camaraderie, indeed. 

That, too, moved something inside her chest.

“I am terribly sorry for your loss,” the blonde said. 

“As am I,” Dament echoed.

Suzette swallowed. “Thank you.”

“I can assure you that his service did not go unnoticed.” It was the blonde again, speaking quietly. “I’m sure the the King . . . And Auguste . . . were both humbled.”

It was unusual to hear a fellow Veretian refer to the late Prince Auguste as anything other than His Highness or, in the case of zealots filled with Veretian pride, The Golden Star. The sincerity in Charls’s eyes kept it from further agitating her sense of unease. 

“Many people lost loved ones in Marlas,” Suzette said. “I am but one of thousands.” 

She looked down. She studied the whorls in the unfinished wood, fighting a brief battle with the pressure behind her eyes. This was the first time in four years that thoughts of her husband inspired such a battle, which was appalling in its own way. After a while the memories of him had become weightless as clouds of dust, able to be easily swept aside when they inconvenienced her. 

“The King built a new palace on the field where my husband died,” she said. 

Charls shifted, the old chair creaking under his weight. There was a tightness behind his words as he said, “So he did.” 

“It is the most beautiful palace I’ve ever seen. It’s like . . .” She hesitated, suddenly feeling very stupid. Her guests’ absolute silence made it worse. “Like when a field burns. The field is ugly and black at first. But then the crops start to grow back and they’re more plentiful than ever before. More beautiful. So in a way it's as if . . .”

She trailed off. Finishing the sentence  _ would  _ sound stupid to someone who was not inside her head. 

“As if it's a gravestone for your husband,” Charls supplied. “An elegant eulogy.”

Suzette looked up. It was as though he had plucked the thought right from her brain. “Why . . . yes.”

“I identify with your feelings,” he said. “Perhaps more than you know.” 

He smiled. It was the rueful type of smile that Suzette had grown very familiar with in the past eight years: the only type of smile she’d been capable of since Marlas. It felt terrible to see it on the face of one so young. It made the pressure behind her eyes increase until there was nothing to do except lift the hem of her gown to the corners of her eyes, and try to control the flood. 

Dament scooted closer to Charls and turned in toward him. He didn’t seem to expect any words from Charls, nor any interaction at all; he just watched him. After a moment, Charls turned toward Dament. Now they were gazing at each other. Not a word was exchanged, yet she still felt that she was eavesdropping on a private conversation. It was as though they were in a different world where she didn’t exist. 

Suzette blinked the tears from her eyes. _Who are you people?_

There was a knock on the door. 

Suzette gasped. Charls and Dament started in tandem, the chain jangling violently. 

“Expecting someone?” Dament asked. 

“No,” Suzette whispered. 

The knock rained again, harder this time. Suzette leapt from her seat. Charls and Dament followed suit, looking at each other. 

“Persistent fellow,” Charls remarked. 

“Do you think it could be . . . “ Dament asked. 

Charls nodded, then smiled. 

“Who is it?” Suzette asked, hating the trembly sound of her voice. When they didn’t answer, her heart dropped into her stomach. Perhaps her first impression had been right after all. Perhaps they were a couple of petty criminals, and she was now the victim of an elaborate ambush. She pressed a hand over her racing heart and cried, “Answer me, now!” 

“You’ve no need to be frightened,” Dament said. His voice was gentle, yet commanding. “You’ve done nothing wrong.”

“The visitor is here for us,” Charls added, sounding almost amused. 

Another knock. Suzette took a quick glance over her shoulder, at her husband’s dusty sword in the corner. Her thoughts were bifurcated. There was the unseen threat behind her, hammering on the door. There was also the threat in front of her. The men were chained together, yes, but that did not yield much solace. Dament could doubtlessly kill her with only one hand. She didn't want to believe it, after what they’d just shared, but she  _ had  _ to. Better to be an alive skeptic than a dead fool. 

“Does that door lead anywhere?” Charls asked, pointing to the back door.   


“The barn is a little ways across the pasture,” Suzette replied. “But-”

“The we’ll take our leave.” He made a little gesture, as though tipping a hat in her direction. “Please don’t tell your visitor we were here. It will only cause unnecessary trouble.”

“Wait-” 

Charls was already opening the backdoor, welcoming the roar of rain. “You haven’t seen us. You don’t know us.”

“It’s better this way,” Dament said, as he was hustled out the door. “Trust me.” 

The door closed. All that remained were the splattered remains of raindrops on the floor and the agitated lick of the fire. 

Suzette stared at the backdoor for a few seconds, torn between confusion, fear, and rage. There was a part of her that wanted to call them back, to tell them not to leave her alone to confront whatever was on the other side of the front door. There was another part of her that wanted to run out there with them and hide. There was a third, fiery part that wanted to open the front door and tell the impatient visitor where they were. But- 

_ Trust me,  _ the Akielon said. 

Why was it so easy to believe him? 

Her visitor knocked again, this time hard enough to rattle the candlesticks on the mantle. 

“All right, I’m coming!” She cried, managing to school the tremor from her voice. “For Heaven’s sake, be patient!” 

The door opened with a gust of wind that nearly ripped the knob from her grasp. The man on the other side looked very similar to Dament: well-muscled, dark-skinned, with all the typical trademarks of southern Akielon birth. Instead of a simple chiton, he wore leather armor and a red cape, which was so soaked that the wind barely moved it. There was a sword in its scabbard at his hip. 

The biggest difference between this man and Dament was the quality of his gaze. This man did not have the same easy, good-natured aura. There were light wrinkles around his eyes that suggested he was prone to scowling. 

“Good evening, my lady,” he said, dipping into a perfunctory bow. 

It took Suzette a little longer than it should have to bob a casual curtsey. “Good evening.” The rain made it hard to see the landscape behind the man, but she thought she saw the silhouette of a wagon in the distance. Perhaps five or six untethered horses. “May I ask who you are?” 

“Nikandros, my lady. Kyros of Ios.” 

Certain aspects of Akielon culture were still unfamiliar to Suzette, being that the alliance was less than five years fresh. However, even the most insignificant of peasants knew the meaning of the word  _ Kyros.  _

She curtsied low: the proper greeting for Veretian royalty. But wait - what did Akielon women do? Should she prostrate herself instead? Genuflect? Sweat sprang to her forehead, cooled by the gentle mist of rain. 

“At ease,” Nikandros said. “I am not here as a matter of state. I am only here to ask if you’ve had visitors tonight.” 

Her pulse raced. She tried to sound totally innocent as she asked, “Visitors?” 

“I am looking for two men,” he said. “One is a blonde-haired, blue eyed-” he cut himself off and looked at his feet, mumbling under his breath. 

Suzette leaned forward. “Pardon?”

He cleared his throat and looked back up. “Nevermind. One is blonde, the other is brunette. An Akielon, about my build. Have you seen them?”

She forced down the lump in her throat.  _ You haven’t seen us _ , Charls had said. _ You don’t know us.  _ It seemed impossible to say that with this man’s eyes on her. 

_ Trust me,  _ Dament had said. 

“No,” Suzette replied _.  _ “Why would someone visit on a night like this?” 

Nikandros laughed: an instant, unrestrained response. It was brief and quiet, but enough for her to see that he was probably a lot better-natured than her first impression conveyed. 

“Good question,” he remarked. “I wish I knew.” 

He averted his eyes. Suzette’s heart dropped into her stomach when she realized he was looking at a puddle on her doorstep, most likely that left by Charls and Dament as they stood begging to be let inside. This was a Kyros, after all. She shouldn’t have expected him to be so daft. She glanced at her husband’s sword again, knowing all the while she was not willing to use it.

“Might I ask why you’re looking for these two men?” She asked, hoping it would distract him from the puddle. 

It worked. His eyes came back up to hers, and there was not a hint of suspicion in them. She breathed a shallow sigh of relief. 

“Let’s just say there’s a lot of people depending on them,” Nikandros replied. He opened his mouth as though to say something else, but then seemed to think better of it. He closed it and backed away from her doorstep. He looked back over his shoulder at the silhouette in the distance - yes, surely a wagon, alongside at least six riders on horseback, all getting drenched. 

“Well, I pray you find them quickly,” Suzette said. “I’d hate for anyone to be trapped out in this storm, especially a Kyros of Ios. Catching cold will make it hard to perform your duties.” 

Nikandros dipped into another swift bow. “Thank you, my lady. I only wish the two men I’m looking for were so considerate.” 

 

******

 

Suzette picked her way across the flooded pasture, clutching her gown in her fists to keep it from dragging through the mud. 

She felt wretched for sending the Kyros away empty-handed. In fact, the last ten minutes or so had been spent wrestling with her conscience, trying to decide whether she should remain loyal to Dament and Charls, or go catch up with the Kyros and his entourage. There was still a mare in the stables. She was old, but more than capable of closing the short distance if Suzette left quickly enough.

_ I will hear their side of the story,  _ she told herself, thinking of Dament’s honest eyes.  _ If it’s not good enough, I will go turn them in to the Kyros.  _

The barn doors were closed, but there were windows on either side of them. She stood on her tiptoes and peeked through the leftmost one. 

Without the needling bite of the wind and rain, it would have been reasonably comfortable inside the barn. Not exactly warm, but it was apparently enough so that Charls was no longer shivering. He was barefoot, shaking water out of his boots. His wrung-out stockings were draped over a propped-up pitchfork. 

The Akielon was sprawled out in the pile of hay behind him. He was propped up on his elbows, watching Charls with a tiny smile. The chain was still attached to his cuff, but not to Charls’s. The free end lay snaked atop the damp hay. 

Suzette bit her thumbnail. He’d broken free, yet Charls did not seem concerned at all!

“I expected more from you tonight, Charls,” Dament said, his voice muffled through the window glass. 

Charls, still shaking water from his boots, tossed an innocuous gaze at him over a shoulder. “What do you mean?” 

“‘Dament the Fearsome Cattle Rustler?’” 

Charls was silent a moment, pausing. After a moment he said, with a lilt of amusement, “Excuse me, it is a little hard to think when you’re freezing to death.” 

“Still.” 

“Oh, hush. She bought it well enough.”

Suzette’s heart, which had only just slowed down after her encounter with the Kyros, throttled against her sternum. So they  _ were  _ lying to her. 

Dament was still arguing. “No, the  _ gold  _ bought it,” he said.   


“Actually,” Charls said, “I think  _ you  _ did. Or did you not notice her making moon eyes at you all night?”

Warmth washed over Suzette’s cheeks. It was an almost-welcome sensation, given the frigidity of the air. 

Dament laughed. “You can’t tell me you’re jealous.” 

“Oh, so you  _ did  _ notice.” Charls said. 

He turned away from Dament. He was now partially facing the window, so Suzette could see what was concealed from Dament: a small, mischievous smile. 

Dament stood up, looking pained. 

“Laurent . . .” He said. “I’m sorry- I mean, I didn’t mean to-”

_ Laurent?  _ Suzette’s confusion scattered into something frantic.  _ Did he not say his name was Charls? _

“Do not bother,” the blonde said, clearly unphased by the alternate name. He tossed his boots to the ground, sending a cloud of dirt and hay dust billowing into the air. “If it were not for her infatuation with you, we’d probably be back in the wagon right now, listening to one of Nikandros’s painfully dull lectures. I can forgive you this time.”    


Dament smiled and his shoulders sagged. Relief. He began slowly walking toward Charls. 

“And I think it’s good we ended up here,” Charls-Laurent- said, looking around at the leaky ceiling, the rotting hay, the buckled boards. “It appears as though she needed us.” 

“There are simpler ways to give charity to a destitute peasant,” Dament said, wrapping his arms around Laurent from behind. “You didn’t have to chain us together, for starters. It would have made it a lot easier for her to trust us.” He began kissing Laurent’s neck. 

“Perhaps,” Laurent conceded. “But this was a lot more fun, wasn’t it? And we got to irritate Nikandros in the process. A nice bonus.” 

Dament released an abrupt, chuffing laugh into Laurent’s neck. He brought both of his hands up to Laurent’s chest and massaged his thumbs over the nipples, which were still visibly pebbled from the cold. Laurent leaned his head back against Dament’s shoulder, puffing out his chest, chasing the touch. 

“Whatever you say, my conniving snake ,” Dament murmured into his neck. 

“I say keep going,” Laurent moaned. 

Dament did. 

Suzette spun away from the scene, pressing her back against the exterior wall of the barn. She moved a clump of dripping hair out of her eyes and blinked into the rain. The moans behind her were growing louder, evidence that she should make herself scarce, and  _ quick.  _ But there was something unfolding in her mind. It hit like an explosion, so that her entire body had to pause and center on this one task, this task of understanding. 

The blonde had said his name was Charls. The blonde had been lying. Dament had called him  _ Laurent  _ a minute or so ago _ ,  _ and he had made no move to oppose him. 

The blonde’s name was  _ Laurent.  _ Just like the King. 

He was beautiful _ ,  _ just like the King was rumored to be.

He was  _ blonde _ , just like the-

She clapped a hand over her mouth. It seemed all she could do to stifle the lung-wilting gasp that came out of her. Yet the revelations didn’t stop there. Why would King Laurent be in the presence of a criminal? She thought of Dament and his kind, steady, yet commanding presence. “Criminal” didn’t make sense. She thought of the way they gazed at each other, and the way they seemed to think in tandem, each move a private synchronization. She had known only one such relationship in her life.

It had been her relationship with her husband. 

It was widely known throughout Vere, even in these rural parts, that King Laurent and King Damianos of Akielos were more than mere allies. They were lovers. Mates. Life partners. 

_ Let’s just say there’s a lot of people depending on them,  _ Nikandros had said. 

What an understatement. 

She turned back to the window - she couldn’t help herself. She had to get another look at the two of them. She had to convince herself that what she theorized wasn’t true. 

They were kissing: deep, probing kisses, so passionate they could be mistaken for violence. Their hands roamed each other’s bodies, clawing at clothing that was already scarce. It wasn’t long before King Laurent was on his back in the hay, naked from the waist down, his white legs curled around King Damianos’s broad, brown body. Damianos was kissing his neck, his chest, anything he could reach while thrusting. 

There was no elegant way to describe what she was seeing. They were fucking. 

At first, it did not occur to her that she should give them their privacy. It was a spectacle to be witnessed, much like a carriage crash or a bar fight:  _ I saw the Kings fucking. In my barn. In the rain.  _

“There's hay stuck between my toes,” Laurent said, between kisses. 

King Damianos, between grunts: “Well, ignore it, and concentrate on fucking me.” 

“Oh, believe me, I couldn't ignore  _ that  _ even if I-" 

The next word was probably meant to be  _ tried.  _ Instead it came out as a strangled gasp, quite involuntary, as Damianos thrust inside with renewed fervor. 

It had the effect of a rooster call on a misty Sunday morning. Suzette crouched beneath the window and tiptoed away, careful not to let the squelching of the mud give her away. She glanced at her old mare as she walked past the stables. The mare looked quite comfortable in there, her cloudy eyes focused on some unseen point in the hazy distance. She would remain. Her services would not be needed tonight. 

Suzette entered the house and wrung her gown out into the fire. The surrealism of the situation hit her then. She had no one to tell about what she’d just saw, and even if she did, why would they ever believe her? In time, she might even have to convince herself that it was not a dream. 

She turned around, intending to sit before the fire and dry her hair. Her eyes fell on the table. The velvet bag of gold that Charls - King Laurent - had given her at the beginning of the night was there, placed neatly in the center. She had told him she could not accept it, but he’d never taken it back. He’d just left it, as thoughtlessly as he’d left the pail of hot water and old rags. 

_ There are better ways to give charity to a destitute peasant,  _ King Damianos had said. 

Something told her they would not be back to collect it. 

  


**Author's Note:**

> Why were they chained together, you ask? I don’t know. Did Nikandros chain them together to keep them from slipping away in the dark? A weird sex game gone wrong? It was hard to explain this, since the story is from Suzette’s POV, so I guess you can just use your imagination. (I’m in favor of a weird sex game, to be honest) 
> 
> I think the biggest takeaway from this is the fact that Nikandros has “resting bitch face”. 
> 
> This went a totally different direction than I originally planned it to (that happens often), but I hope you enjoyed it!


End file.
